From Tiny Seeds, Mighty Collard Greens Grow

Saleh Murshed

The Healthy Corners project is putting fresh produce into two inner-city Richmond markets. If the idea takes root, one of the nation's worst food deserts could blossom with outlets for healthy food.

by James A. Bacon

To grasp the challenge that faces the reformers who want to introduce wholesome fruits and vegetables into the food desert of Richmond's inner city, go visit the Clay Street Market in Church Hill. Step through the front door and glance around. To the left, you'll see Shawn Algahein or one of his relatives behind the cash register ringing up sales of cigarettes, lottery tickets, food and other convenience items. Sweeping your gaze to the right, you'll view shelf after shelf of food so unhealthy that just looking at it hardens the arteries. Near the door is an array of candy: Twix, Skittles, Hershey chocolate bars and dozens of other brands. Nearby, racks groan under six-packs of Miller beer and big plastic bottles of Coca-Cola. Counters display an endless assortment of snack foods: Dorito's, Lays Potato Chips and varieties of pork rinds you'll never find in a suburban store. Toward the rear, you'll spot shelf space devoted to real if not especially nutritious food, like rice, potatoes, ketchup, canned peas and and canned spaghetti.

Amidst the cornucopia of salt, sugar and fat, set just behind a case loaded with ice cream bars, stands a small refrigerator, a little bigger than one you might find in a college dorm room. Through the glass case you can see a dozen or so bundles of locally grown collard greens and salad greens.

Sales of fresh vegetables are a little slow, says Algahein. He hopes they will pick up in the beginning of the month when many of his customers get their food stamps. "When people see [the fresh food], they say it's good we have it," he says. "People are excited that we have it."

In the past when he tried fresh fruit and vegetables, he lost money. He stocked green peppers, bananas, apples and oranges, he says, but "we threw a lot of stuff away." Eventually, he gave up. But this time is different. He is taking no financial risk. Tricycle Gardens, a non-profit urban farm, provided the refrigerator at no expense, and it promises to reimburse Alghahein for any produce that goes bad. Give it time, he says, and the vegetables could catch on. "People are looking for stuff that is healthier."

The Clay Street Market is one of two convenience stores -- a Valero market in the Fulton area is the other -- participating in a pilot project that Tricycle Gardens and its partners launched this month. The short-term goal is to sell enough fresh fruit and veggies to justify taking up permanent shelf space in the two convenience stores. A longer-term goal is to replicate the project elsewhere. The ultimate goal is to obliterate food deserts, where fresh food is inaccessible to anyone without a car, across the commonwealth.

Sally Schwitters, executive director of Tricycle Gardens, is under no illusions that the task will be easy but she is optimistic. The launch has met expectations. "Within the first week," she says, "we sold out of collard greens."

The Healthy Corners initiative arose from conversations involving Tricycle Gardens, the City of Richmond, the state health department, Virginia Community Capital and the Bon Secours of Richmond Health System. City Councilwoman Cynthia Newbill chaired a series of meetings beginning in December 2012. All parties shared a concern that poor nutrition was a root cause of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and other maladies afflicting the poor.

"Everyone saw the need and said, 'Yes, let's do this," recalls Teri Lovelace, vice president-corporate development for Virginia Community Capital, a community development financial institution. What she found remarkable, she adds, is the speed with which things came together. People started talking in December and food was placed in two markets by April.

Inspired by the experience of Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., in distributing fresh food through inner-city grocery stores, the Richmond participants put their own spin on the idea. For starters, they had less money so they decided to start with a pilot project rather than a city-wide roll-out. On the other hand, Tricycle Gardens already had built a strong network of relationships in the East End, so it held a series of community meetings to test the waters.

"People told us they want healthy food in their communities, and they'd like to see it in the corner markets" says Schwitters. "They saw a benefit in it being locally produced." The feedback was helpful. In planning the plantings, Tricycle Gardens reduced the varieties of pepper in favor of growing more tomatoes. Schwitters also learned that customers needed to be educated about the seasonality of vegetables.

The East End has the reputation of being the largest food desert in the country for a metropolitan region Richmond's size. Danny Avula, deputy director of the Richmond City Health District, lives in a low-income community and sees the problem close up. "There's a corner store on my block," he says. "I see kids streaming out with candy, chips and Ramen noodles."

He's heard older people talk about the change in culinary culture, Avula says. The grand-parents' generation was accustomed to eating fresh produce out of their own gardens. The parents' generation had eaten fresh vegetables but mainly shifted to processed foods, which they saw as cheap and convenient. Today's generation finds fresh food an alien experience. Many people wouldn't like fresh food if they tasted it, and they wouldn't know how to prepare it if they did.

The Richmond community is attacking the problem from many directions. Tricycle Gardens, churches and community groups are establishing vegetable gardens, commonly referred to as urban farms. Meanwhile Tricycle Gardens is demonstrating raised-bed "key-hole" gardens that households can install in back yards, and is organizing educational and cooking sessions to familiarize the inner-city population with how to utilize fresh vegetables. In a separate initiative, the City of Richmond sponsors the "shopper shuttle" bus, which picks up shoppers at five different locations in food-desert territory and ferries them to a Wal-Mart grocery store three times a month. That service has attracted up to 200 rider-trips per month, says Paul Manning, chief service officers for the city's human services department.

All those efforts are well and good but the healthy food movement need to plug into the existing food distribution network to make serious inroads. The goal of Healthy Corners is to recruit the multitude of small, corner-store merchants in Richmond's impoverished East End where large grocery stores cannot operate profitably. The business challenge is simply stated. Fresh vegetables have a short shelf-life and when they go bad, they get thrown away -- a dead loss. Small, under-capitalized merchants don't have the financial staying power to sustain a loss while demand builds. There is far less risk in dedicating space to a product with a long shelf life.

The Healthy Corners project attacks the problem directly. Using money from a federal grant, Tricycle Gardens provides the refrigerator, eliminating the need for any upfront investment. The non-profit also writes a Memorandum of Understanding detailing how the partnership will work and providing for reimbursements for lost produce. The idea is to create win-win for the merchant. If the initiative works, he creates a new revenue stream. If customers don't respond, the business still gets recompensed for its loss.

Tricycle Gardens approached a dozen store owners in the East End that cater to SNAP and WIC (Woman, Infants, Children) customers. Some were interested, says Schwitters, some were not. At the end of the process, they signed up two vendors. There is no set timetable for the program. They'll see how things go, adjusting the program as it progresses. "We will continue to assess it," she says.

"This is not a charity," emphasizes Lovelace with Virginia Community Capital. "This is not going to be grant funded on an ongoing basis. The goal is to be self-sustaining. The store owners must want it. The community must want it."

The beauty of the experiment is that, if sales are profitable, corner-store merchants will need no prodding to expand their offerings. When shops owners want to grow and expand, Virginia Community Capital will stand ready to help them, providing technical help to get their bookkeeping bank-ready.

Schwitters sees the fresh food movement as an engine for community development. As East End residents demand more fresh, locally grown food, they will stimulate demand that will create opportunities for inner-city residents to launch their own urban farms. When people play a role in growing vegetables, she says, they are far more likely to develop a taste for them. In an ideal world, farmers, shop keepers and consumers inspire those around to alter their diet. Says she: "Making the behavior change to eat healthy doesn't have to be complicated."

This article was made possible by a sponsorship by Bon Secours of Virginia Health System.

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